Amendment of the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1986

7 (1) The Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1986 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 36 (regulations), in subsection (3), after paragraph (bb) insert—

“(bc) is participating, or seeking to participate, in inquiry proceedings within the meaning of the Inquiries into Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths etc. (Scotland) Act 2016 (see section 11(2)(a) of that Act);””.—(Catherine Atkinson.)

This amendment enables regulations to be made to extend legal aid to bereaved family members where a public authority is a participant in an inquiry in Scotland into a fatal accident or sudden death.

Third Reading

King’s consent signified.

I usually have to ask the King for consent, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I still remember the first time I met the Hillsborough families with Bishop James Jones. That was nearly 15 years ago, as the Director of Public Prosecutions. It was a humbling experience, and I was taken aback by their courage. To be able to campaign after such unimaginable loss—it floored me. As a father of teenagers who come to watch football with me, I do not think I could do that myself. To then keep going and going, as the state deployed all its power to obstruct justice and truth—that is a stain on our history. Yet keep going they did, and we are here today because of them. Some of them are with us in the Gallery today, and they were with me in No. 10 just this afternoon.

Indeed, that has always been the motivation for this Bill. The Hillsborough families fought so that no family like them should ever have to endure and suffer what they went through. What they have done will protect individuals and families whom they will never know and will never meet, but who will never have to go through what they went through. In my view, that is incredibly inspiring and humbling. This is not just a Bill for the 97, although it is that. It is a Bill for every single working person in this country, because let us face it: there is a class element to this. Time and again the cry for justice has been ignored by the British state because of who the victims are—because they are working class, because they are black, because they are women and girls.

I come here today not to take credit for this Government or this House, but as Prime Minister, to put on our national record exactly where the credit belongs. It belongs to the families and to the campaigners, and I pay tribute to every one of them: the Hillsborough families, Hillsborough Law Now, Inquest, Grenfell United, the Manchester Arena families—some of whom were with me again this afternoon and are here today—victims of the grooming gangs, the Horizon scandal, the infected blood campaigners, the Truth About Zane campaign and all the families who engaged with us to share their deeply personal and painful experiences. I thank them all for their time and, most of all, for their courage. While these are different tragedies, they represent the same demand repeated across decades: for truth, justice and accountability to belong equally to every single person in this country.

I am grateful to every Member of this House and in the other place from across the political divide who worked constructively with us to get us to this point and turn this long-denied cry for justice into the law of this land. It is long, long overdue. I pay credit to everybody who has fought so hard for this every single step of the way and thank them for what they have done.

This Bill has been too long coming, but now, as we reach Third Reading, we stand on the precipice of change. This is a moment of real significance for our country. We arrive here with a Bill that is stronger and, above all, worthy of those who fought for it. It is a law that will always carry their name: the Hillsborough law. I commend this Bill to the House.

Let me begin, as I have throughout the passage of this Bill, by placing at the forefront my admiration for the campaigners—the families and friends of the 97 who lost their lives in the Hillsborough tragedy. On 15 April 1989 their lives were changed forever. Nothing could be done to bring back their loved ones after they were gone. Anyone who has lost someone close to them suddenly like that knows the experience of their world changing in an instant, when at one point the person they care deeply about is there, and suddenly, in the next moment, they are not. Afterwards, everything—everything else—is different.

While those deaths could not be undone, what could have changed and what could have been different was the truth about what happened to their loved ones being told to them, and it was not—not just as an act of omission, but as part of a deliberate cover-up by the police and others to protect themselves from the consequences of their failings. What might have been solely a tragic experience of grief that would of course never leave them, with a gap in their lives where their loved ones were supposed to be, was in addition turned into decades of torment as they fought so hard for that truth that was kept from them.

The Bill is born of that fight and of that torment, and it is a tribute to their determination. That is why, when I faced the Prime Minister across the Dispatch Box eight months ago, I made clear the good-faith desire of the Opposition to engage constructively with the Government on this Bill. I have sought to live up to that throughout its passage, not just for the Hillsborough families, but for the many others let down by the state and its institutions—the postmasters, the infected blood scandal victims, and those lost in the Grenfell Tower fire and other tragedies and scandals, as Members across the House have highlighted throughout the passage of this Bill.

I feel still the keen interest of the families as we reach Third Reading, but it is our job—mine, the Opposition’s and all MPs’—to both hold in one hand, sincerely and clearly, the experiences of all those people who have suffered so greatly and, on the other, our duty and responsibility to legislate carefully and in a considered way. I am deeply disappointed that this Prime Minister and this Government have made that task much, much more difficult than it needed to be. [Interruption.] I would challenge any MP—[Interruption.] Any MP, no matter—[Interruption.] I would challenge—

No. I would challenge any MP— [Interruption.] Not yet, not yet. No matter how supportive of this legislation, with far-reaching—[Hon. Members: “give way!”] No, I will finish this moment. With far-reaching consequences—[Interruption.]

Order. The Shadow Minister must be heard.

I would challenge any MP, no matter how supportive of this legislation—which has such far-reaching consequences for the operation of the Government—to say that its progress, particularly over the last 24 hours, is anything like careful and considered.

If the Prime Minister wanted to truly live up to that promise, he would not have introduced legislation with less than 24 hours’ notice on an issue of national security. As the House has alluded to, I would have wanted the opportunity to make this moment a purely positive one, but I am afraid that the Prime Minister has made it impossible for me to fulfil my duties to the House. To give less than 24 hours’ notice for consideration of a Bill before its Third Reading is simply unacceptable. The House, those families, this Bill deserve greater respect than that. There is simply no excuse for the series of mistakes made by the Prime Minister’s Government that have led us here—led us to a place where those of us who engaged in good faith, as I did, cannot possibly be expected to have any trust left on a Bill that has trust at its heart.

The Prime Minister announced this Bill at his party conference in 2024. The media were briefed and told that the Bill and how it would operate had the full support of campaigning families and their legal advisers. They were so supportive, in fact, that they had released statements to that effect—and we now know that that was not true: they had already explained their misgivings. Then, after the introduction of the Bill, a Minister told me directly that the families were entirely happy with how the Bill was being legislated. And that also was not true.

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising that point. It was on that basis that I sought sincerely to engage properly with the Bill, and the Ministers and officials who met me repeatedly would be able to attest to that. That cannot be sustained when a Government bring forward legislation with 24 hours’ notice of important matters of national security.

The Government say that they have now resolved the central tension that led to the Bill being pulled. After months of negotiations, the central claim made by their Ministers that it needed particular safeguards for the agencies working in national security has now disappeared—apparently no longer needed. A Government who have wilfully misled us repeatedly on this Bill now want us to set aside—[Interruption.]

Order. I think that the Shadow Minister needs to be very careful in his use of language.

A Government who have, inadvertently, repeatedly misled us on this Bill now want us to take them on trust. I heard personally and directly from Ministers and officials repeatedly that independent safeguards were needed, and now, apparently, they are not. Supposedly, over the weekend, those concerns have evaporated, and that is totally unacceptable. We are suddenly setting aside in a matter of days what the security services have told us for 18 months, in consistent, sober, professional warnings, which coincides perfectly with the Prime Minister coming here to give his final speech on this matter. Are we really going to suggest that that genuine professional opinion has changed overnight? I do not think that it has.

If the Government were so concerned about this Bill passing, they should have organised it. We have just listened to a raft of amendments to the Bill being nodded through in this House, with absolutely no scrutiny. [Interruption.]

Order. I will hear the Shadow Minister. I appreciate that temperatures are running very high, but it is important that voices are heard in this House.

As I have said, this could have been a Bill that we supported without reservation, but I am afraid that we maintain reservations about it, entirely as a result of its mismanagement by the Prime Minister.

I want to conclude by saying that none of this takes anything at all away from the families. [Interruption.] Labour Members do not want to hear this. It does not take anything away from the Members who have done so much to bring this legislation forward, but what is clear is that the Bill is the legacy of the campaigners and MPs—nobody else is responsible for our being here. I welcome their campaigning over many years and thank them for it.

I feel tempted to start this speech by saying, “As I was saying 10 years ago in this place,” but it feels fitting to be here tonight, and particularly to be with my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister. I remember very clearly that at the conclusion of the second Hillsborough inquest, he worked with me, as part of the Shadow Health team back then, to draft the original Bill that was presented to Parliament. Tonight, it is before this House.

Tonight, it feels like life is coming full circle. In passing this momentous piece of legislation, which will change the way this country thinks about and works towards justice, we are truly rewiring the state and passing power from the authorities to the hands of ordinary people. It is happening because of the Prime Minister’s commitment to a country based on justice and fairness, and we thank him for that. He has honoured his commitment to the Hillsborough families, and what this House will do in passing this Bill tonight is rebalance the scales of justice so that we have justice for ordinary people going forward. That is some legacy indeed.

We have all recognised that we simply would not be here tonight were it not for the dignity and determination of the Hillsborough families, who are with us in this Chamber this evening. They have been supported by the wider group of campaigns as part of Hillsborough Law Now. I want to recognise their lawyers, Pete Weatherby KC and Elkan Abrahamson KC, who are with us this evening; INQUEST’s Deborah Coles, who is with us as well; and all the people who supported the campaign. That is the reason we are here, but we are also here because of the city of Liverpool, which is represented so well by my hon. Friend Ian Byrne, who has been the parliamentary lead on this Bill and has been entirely true to the people of his city, as has my friend Steve Rotheram, a former Member of this House and now the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, who also carried the campaign to this point.

I cannot describe my pride in being in the House tonight to see this Bill plant the values of the city of my birth at the heart of this country. That is something of huge and profound significance that has been brought about by the Hillsborough families. We recognise the significance of that tonight.

As Steve Rotheram has said, the Hillsborough law cannot do any more for the Hillsborough families. It will do much more for those who come after them, but that is what makes their campaign so special. They have done this for others, not for themselves. It is important to remind the House of the other campaigns, which we hope will now be lifted by this legislation as we pass it this evening.

We do think this evening, as the Prime Minister said, of the Grenfell survivors and families—I am sure all London Members will want to echo that—who are still waiting for justice and accountability over nine years after the Grenfell fire. We think tonight of the Primodos families, who have fought so hard for fairness, supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East—

I have been away for a while, but I will get there in the end.

I know that other Members in this House have supported those who have suffered other treatment disasters—sodium valproate, mesh, PIP implants. These are still ongoing campaigns, and we need to recognise these campaigns in the House tonight, as we do that of the Chinook families, who were in court today—only just now, I was speaking about that to Vikki Slade in the Lobby—and we pay tribute to them this evening.

Let us not forget in this list, and I know they have support from across the House, the servicemen who served this country in the post-war period in the south Pacific—our nuclear test veterans. How often in this House do we praise our veterans, and how in this case have we left those veterans without truth and justice about what happened to them all those years ago? I think this House needs to hear their call for a special tribunal, which is entirely consistent with the aims of the Bill we are passing tonight.

This Bill advances all of these just causes, and the campaign for truth and justice does not stop here; indeed, it accelerates from here. I hope it ends the cover-up culture that has failed so many ordinary people in this country. We can never forget that for 20 years an entire English city was crying “Injustice!” correctly, yet this place ignored those people for all that time. We cannot forget that, and we cannot take away the hurt that that caused. We cannot forget that postmasters and mistresses serving communities up and down this country were branded as petty thieves, and carried that stigma with them for years. Likewise, those infected by infected blood were blamed for having brought it on themselves through their lifestyle. We cannot forget that.

Let me finish where I started, with the Liverpool supporters who were blamed for harming their own fellow supporters at a football match. That is what was done, and that was left to stand for all those years. The families here tonight had to live with that for all those years. Imagine what that must have felt like. We have had a situation in this country where people suffered the trauma of the initial bereavement—the incident that took their loved ones away—and then were retraumatised by the behaviour of the state. We cannot take that hurt away tonight, but we can put decency back at the heart of the British state, and that is what this Bill does. I finish by again praising the Prime Minister for making it happen. This truly is his legacy.

I begin by echoing the words of the Prime Minister and Andy Burnham in paying tribute to the Hillsborough campaigners. Our whole country owes them a debt, and I want to speak about that, but I want to do so in the spirit of cross-party support and working that this moment demands.

I want to pay tribute personally to the Prime Minister for the work that he has done on this, having to overcome the difficulties, as we know, with the security issues. I also want to pay tribute—I hope this is not the last time—to the right hon. Member for Makerfield, who is welcome back in this House. He has for many years paid a very personal role in this campaign, so it is very fitting that he is in the House tonight to see this law passed. I echo the tributes that he has paid, and that others will no doubt pay, because people have campaigned for many years for this moment. The enormous debt of gratitude we owe them for their courage, tenacity and determination is one that I hope this historic moment gives proper credit to.

But let us remember, as others have said, that it is not just the Hillsborough scandal; it is Grenfell, it is Windrush, it is Horizon, it is Orgreave, it is infected blood, it is covid, it is the nuclear test veterans, and the other scandals that have been mentioned. The right hon. Member for Makerfield was right to add Primodos to the list. I hope, by the way, when he takes the office we expect him to take soon, that he will put right those scandals. We will hold him to that in a cross-party manner.

There are many tragedies and scandals that have been compounded by state cover-up. This is an issue of rights between the state and individuals: victims, survivors and families having to fight for years or even decades just to expose the truth and win the justice they should have had straight away.

All too often, when things have gone wrong, we have seen a tendency to cover up mistakes, to close ranks, to protect institutions and, so often, to lie. Victims and families have spent years campaigning tirelessly against a system and an establishment that have tried to find countless ways of saying no. Thanks to those campaigners, we now take a big step closer to ending that culture of cover up, ensuring that no one has to fight so long and so painfully to get truth, justice and accountability.

There is more to do, and not just on the individual scandals but on the need to protect whistleblowers. That is an issue the Liberal Democrat party has raised and we want to work cross-party with the Government to ensure that we set up an independent office for whistleblowers, so that people come forward to expose scandals and ensure justice happens more quickly.

Many of the people who will benefit from this law will not recognise and will not even know how hard—how painfully hard—the campaigners have had to work over so many years. It is important that we remember that. It is truly remarkable, having suffered so much pain and injustice, that they kept going. What has been achieved in the Bill is something that will change the very nature of power in our country. It will make the lives of so many people better.

I thank the campaigners. I say to them, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.